Lift Up Your Hearts!

Three Cups of Tea:  One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin Books, New York, 2007)

Greg Mortenson, the son of missionary parents, had a happy childhood in Africa, but his return to the United States as a teenager was rough, and it took him a long time to find his way.  As he tells it, it took a dramatic failure to lead him to his calling—but I disagree that someone has failed who has not succeeded in climbing the infamous K2 because he expended too much time and energy rescuing a climber in distress.  Whatever you call it, from that point in 1993 on, Mortenson's energies would be spent on a different form of rescue:  building schools and promoting education, especially for girls, in the remote, impoverished villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Mortenson was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009; even President Obama's most enthusiastic supporters cannot read Three Cups of Tea without entertaining a doubt or two as to the wisdom of the Nobel Committee's final choice.  (The Nobel Committee overlooked Gandhi, too, so their peculiar judgement is not without precedent.) (More)

National Treasure (Walt Disney Pictures, 2004, PG)

I may have discovered the secret of enjoying movies:  low expectations.  All I had known about National Treasure was that it had something to do with a puzzle in American history, and when I learned that it was instead more along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, I wanted nothing to do with it.  My knowledge of history is shaky enough as it is—the last thing I need is another set of false "facts" cluttering up my brain, a la Braveheart and Amadeus.  But I was assured the movie is so unbelievable that would not be a problem, and indeed that I probably wouldn't like it because of the great, glaring impossibilities.

So, armed with that knowledge, I really did enjoy the movie, in the same way that I enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Once you know it's ridiculous, it's actually funny. They even got some of the history right.

Between the two of us, we guessed a lot of the plot and even some of the lines, but the movie is about a puzzle so that only added to the enjoyment.  And I always like seeing places I know, like Philadelphia's Franklin Institute and Independence Hall.

The rating is PG, but I didn't find anything that would make me issue a granchild warning—in fact, it reminded me of the McGuyver shows they like so much.

A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe (New American Library, New York, 1960)

I first read this as a requirement for school, I believe, though I remember nothing of it, not even the grade I was in.  It has long been my theory that many schoolteachers take good books and make them boring, either by being bored themselves, or by presenting the books to students who don't have enough life experience to appreciate them.  A Journal of the Plague Year is proof that some required books don't need any pedagogical interference to be boring.

The plague in question is the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Defoe had been born about five years earlier, and wrote the Journal in 1722.  It is a work of fiction, but written in such detail and with so much obvious research that it is impossible to tell where history ends and fiction begins. (More)

Just Courage:  God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian, by Gary Haugen (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2008)

Christianaudio.com offers a free download each month, and a few months ago the offering was Just Courage.  I'd rather read a book than listen to it, but audio books are perfect on my walks or when driving.  It sounded interesting, and the price was certainly right. 

Gary Haugen is the president and CEO of International Justice Mission.^*  I was not familiar with the organization before reading (listening to) Just Courage, but it's enough to make one hesitate before making the next lawyer joke.  The description from their website sums their mission up well. (More)

Weapons of Mass Instruction:  A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, 2009)

A pastor I know was fond of quoting Martin Luther, who, when asked why he preached on justification by faith every week, responded, "Because you forget it every week."  John Taylor Gatto has no love for Martin Luther, but I can imagine him giving a similar response when asked why his books, articles, and lectures include so much that he has said before.  He has a critically important message to deliver, and is clearly compelled to repeat it as many times and in as many ways as he can.

In his desperation to make people understand what he has learned, from his research and 30 years on the front lines of teaching, Gatto has become more pointed, strident and radical as time goes on.  It's an understandable reaction—I remember noting the same effect in John Holt's writings, and I fall prey to it all too often myself—but for this reason I hesitate a little to recommend Weapons of Mass Instruction to anyone who is not already convinced of the dangers inherent in our pubic school system.  And yet...I do recommend it, highly.  Why?  Let me digress. (More)

The Selfless Gene:  Living with God and Darwin, by Charles Foster (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2009)

Charles Foster got one thing right:  "The biologists will think that I have oversimplified the biology....Theologians will justifiably moan that I have summarized too brutally some very big and complex ideas."  That's inevitable in a book that purports to bring sense to the evolution/creation debate, and might be forgivable for the extensive footnotes and bibliography, were the book not condescending as well.

Foster cries, "A plague on both your houses!" to young-earth creationists (a category which he unfortunately stretches to include nearly everyone with doubts about some parts of the evolutionary paradigm) and Richard Dawkins-style hyper-Darwinists, then sets forth his own solution to the problem. Unfortunately, his conclusions aren't as obvious or as logical as he would like to believe.  After several chapters that needlessly insult creationists he shifts his aim to the hyper-Darwinists, following that with chapters that must have theologians scratching their heads.  I can't decide if he's brilliant or merely heretical.

Nonetheless, The Selfless Gene is still a book worth reading.  Foster is unafraid to tackle the important and perplexing questions that most people, especially those on the extremes of this debate, would rather ignore.  And he's right that the extremes actually support and reinforce each other, increasing book sales while decreasing understanding.  Whether or not Foster's ideas are right, they are at least thought-provoking, and might break a few mental log jams.

The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (Penguin, New York, 2006)

My limited knowledge of Michael Pollan prior to devouring this book was primarily his mantra for healthy eating:  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  There's a lot of wisdom there — not that I'm very good at following it — but that phrase itself is not found in The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It is the beginning, however, of an excellent Pollan article in the New York Times, Unhappy Meals.

I'll admit I was expecting a diatribe, a full-force blast against agri-business and the factory farm, more along the lines of what we hear from the more strident vegans and animal rights activists.  Pollan, however, is much too skilled as a journalist and writer for that.  If his journeys lead him to both Food Hell and Food Heaven, they also show him that there is no clear, simple, and easy path to salvation when it comes to eating. (More)

Mayflower:  A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick (Penguin, New York, 2006)

 Whatever your preconceptions are of the Mayflower, its passengers, and the Native Americans whose lives were irrevocably altered by its arrival on their shores, Nathaniel Philbrick will change them.  From the much-sanitized stories many of us older folks learned in elementary school, to the "politically correct" versions that sneer at the Pilgrims and idealize the Indians—forget them all.  They're all partly true, but mostly false, and completely over-simplified.  Both the Pilgrims and the Natives were better, and worse; more innocent, and more Machiavellian; wiser, and more foolish; more skillful, and more inept; than our visions of them.  In short, they were all thoroughly human, and Mayflower's greatest strength lies in its ability to make these humans, European and Native American, as real to us as our next-door neighbors. (More)

Theatre Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild (Dell, New York, 1983)

This wasn't on my reading list at this time, but the combination of (1) hearing a Teaching Company lecture about The Tempest and remembering the part it plays in this book, and (2) a dreary, chilly, rainy day in which the computer, the dryer, and the telephone all suddenly stopped working, led me to feel that what I needed was a bit of curling up by the heater with a blanket, a cup of tea, and an easy-to-read, uplifting book. (More)

Shakespeare:  The Word and the Action, by Peter Saccio; a Teaching Company lecture

For accessible, serious, high-quality, adult-level educational materials (DVD, tape, mp3 downloads) it's hard to beat The Teaching Company.  Tonight we finished the last lecture of Shakespeare:  The Word and the Action, a course which easily ranks as one of my favorites.

Here are the titles of the 16 lectures:

1. Shakespeare's Wavelengths
2. The Multiple Actions of A Midsummer Night's Dream
3. The Form of Shakespeare's Sonnets
4. Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets
5. Love and Artifice in Love's Labor's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing
6. As You Like It
7. The Battles of Henry VI
8. Richard III and the Renaissance
9. History and Family in Henry IV
10. Action in Hamlet
11. Coriolanus—The Hero Alone
12. Change in Antony and Cleopatra
13. The Plot of Cymbeline
14. Nature and Art in The Winter's Tale
15. Three Kinds of Tempest
16. History and Henry VIII

I find it easy to be intimidated by Shakespeare; despite the efforts of my high school teachers, the glories of the Bard didn't begin to open to me until a few months after my 50^th birthday, when I saw Kenneth Branagh's version of Henry V.

Saccio's lectures aren't this inspiring, I will admit.  But most of the plays he teaches I have never seen nor read, and every single lecture left both of us eager to experience the play, which is no small accomplishment.  I highly recommend this course.

Eugenics and Other Evils:  An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State, by G. K. Chesterton.  With Additional Articles by His Eugenic and Birth Control Opponents, including Francis Galton, C. W. Saleeby and Marie Stopes, as Well as Articles from Eugenics Review and Birth Control News.  Edited by Michael W. Perry. (Inkling Books, Seattle, 2000)

In a day when our political views are more polarized than ever, and we tend to choose and judge what we read or watch by its political and social slant, there's a delightful keenness about a book that cannot be so classified.  It is simultaneously far right and far left, which means nothing more than it is something else altogether.  (More)

The latest version of Thunderbird, 3.01, includes a number of significant changes from Version 2.  I think I'm going to like it, at least once the fix a major bug, which I understand they are working on.  The old Thunderbird allowed the assignment of nicknames to e-mail addresses, so, for example, I could set up simple two-letter codes for people I write frequently, and typing those codes into the "To" field auto-completed the correct address.  The new Thunderbird still allows nicknames, but they work differently:  the named address becomes merely one of many suggestions made by the auto-complete engine, and it's rarely the first.  Hence I, and from the word on the Internet, many others, have been embarrassed by sending e-mails to the wrong people.  What's more, the auto-complete engine insists on searching all addresses for possible matches.  I have three address books in Thunderbird:  my Personal Address Book, one I call Archives, into which I put addresses I might want once in a blue moon, and one Thunderbird adds, called "Collected Addresses," which it populates from e-mails sent and received.  All of these are useful, but I'd like to be able to tell Thunderbird to ignore all but the Personal Address Book.

Like Firefox, Thunderbird now uses tabs.  In Firefox (and Internet Explorer) it's annoying, because the button to open a new tab is right next to the button to close the tab, and I'm forever closing tabs by accident and often losing work in the process.  But Thunderbird doesn't have the "add tab" button to foul me up, and it's handy to be able to have several search results and a few e-mails all open in tabs.  Thunderbird remembers what tabs you had open when you exited the program, and restore them when you open it again. (More)

Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003, Sony Pictures, directed by Sylvain Chomet, PG-13)

Also known as The Triplets of Belleville, this is the quirky, sometimes funny, animated story of a bicycle racer, his grandmother, his dog, the French Mafia, and has-been singing trio.  The award-winning film is meant for adults, but were it not for a couple of brief scenes (a music hall show, and some in-passing shots of prostitutes in the hallway), I think our six-year-old grandson would love it.  (Hmmm, there is a funny part that might be tough for his frog-loving mother, however.)

We enjoyed it, too, though we found it a bit like a Presbyterian sermon:  they could have said the same thing better in a third the time.  Maybe that is just my American impatience.

I found it quite amusing that for such a very French film, the only language options available on the DVD Netflix sent were English and Spanish.  Not that it matters:  there's almost no dialog, and what there is, is inconsequential.

For some reason I haven't pinned down, the movie brought to mind the Asterix comics.  Perhaps it was the French setting, perhaps something about the drawings, maybe something in the humor.

You can get a taste from the trailer:  Les Triplettes de Belleville. (Link provided because some feedreaders don't pick up the embedded video.) The trailer is safe for granchild eyes, at least as far as Grandma can tell.

The good news is, there's a new orchestra in town:  The Orlando Baroque Orchestra.  Some area musicians observed Central Florida's lack of concerts featuring baroque music and stepped up to remedy the situation.  We attended the third area performance of their first concert.

The venue was a small church, and we sat in the third pew.  The experience of music in such an inimate setting is worlds different from that in a large concert hall, and to my mind significantly more enjoyable.  It is not as much fun as making music yourself in a group, but comes closer.  For this reason, I thoroughly enjoyed the concert, despite having numerous complaints, most of which had to do with disappointed expectations.  But when your experience of baroque orchestras is Boston's Handel and Haydn Society; of lutists is Paul O'Dette; of harpsichordists is Kristian Bezuidenhout; and of oboists is, well, a whole host of marvellous performers; it's difficult not to set yourself up for a fall. (More)

The Merchant of Venice (2004, Sony Pictures, directed by Michael Radford, R)

Not since Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado about Nothing have I seen a movie that brings Shakespeare to life as does this version of The Merchant of Venice.  I'm not familiar enough with the play to guess how much might have been left out, but as it stands, it is exceedingly well crafted and acted.  Unique to this performance is the empathy I felt with all the characters; all are portrayed with a depth of humanity that made me care about what happened to them.  The play is funny, tragic, poignant, and memorable.

The R rating is not as bad as might be:  sexual suggestiveness that would go over the head of anyone I'd worry about, and some brief nudity that wouldn't.  It's a pity movie makers don't think about children when they produce Shakespeare; the elements that keep me from recommending this to our grandchildren are not at all necessary for the film.  Children can get value from the rest of a book, play, or movie while remaining oblivious to descriptions that adults can fully understand and appreciate without explicit portrayal.